May 2021 Newsletter
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WWW.MHCE.US Monthly <strong>Newsletter</strong> | 7<br />
in Afghanistan during a firefight with insurgents, is also facing the choice of<br />
whether to give up benefits in order to get married.<br />
Feeks remembers her late husband as kind, jovial and larger than life. He had<br />
wanted to become a SEAL since he was eight years old and got LASIK surgery<br />
to make that dream a reality.<br />
Her husband's death was "absolutely devastating," she said.<br />
"You have this world with someone, and you have this plan," she explained.<br />
"And everything was destroyed in one second."<br />
Feeks was also in the Navy when she and Patrick met at Naval Amphibious<br />
Base Coronado, California, in 2010, right after she returned from Afghanistan<br />
and he got back from Iraq. She stayed in the service for eight more years after<br />
Patrick's death so she could retire with full benefits.<br />
Feeks is planning to get remarried in October. She'll keep the benefits she earned<br />
from her own service, but is prepared to lose the indemnity pay she has received<br />
since Patrick's death.<br />
"People that have never been in our place tend to say things [like], 'You should<br />
lose that [survivor benefits] when you get remarried; it should be your new<br />
husband's [or spouse's] responsibility,'" Feeks said. "That's not how that should<br />
work. That doesn't negate that that person has lost their life for this nation."<br />
As for Wriglesworth, it will probably be several more years before she can get<br />
remarried. She said she will likely wait until she's finished her master's degree,<br />
found a good job and Savannah has gone off to college, so when the benefits go<br />
away it won't be as much of a blow.<br />
But now, because Aimee and Mike live together in Texas but aren't married, she<br />
said, "I feel judged all the time" by people who don't understand her situation<br />
and reach their own conclusions.<br />
"It's hard to go to church," Wriglesworth said. "How do you explain that to<br />
people? On top of being a widow -- people actually respect that. They go, 'Oh<br />
wow, you're a widow. Thank you for your sacrifice.' And then, 'Oh, but you're<br />
not married.'"<br />
Wriglesworth hopes Congress passes the law to repeal the age limits on<br />
remarriage, so she can live her life the way she wants.<br />
"I still carry my husband with me," she said. "It doesn't mean that I'm not a<br />
Gold Star widow, if I love somebody else as well. ... No person, man or woman,<br />
should have to answer for getting married."<br />
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